This is an art blog based in Europe, primarily Switzerland, but with much about the US and elsewhere. With the changes in blogging and social media, it is now a more public storage for articles connected to discussions occurring primarily on facebook and the like.
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Aesthetic GroundsThe dialogue on public art and public space has almost no American art critics. We need some.Public space is addressed in the socio-political critique of modern culture or in the propaganda of the smart growth, new urbanism and/or green sustainability. And 30 years after the invention of public art, the artists and administrators of the genre are afraid to establish criteria beyond acceptance or tolerance. To have critics of these art forms, new verbal and visual images must flow everyday. With consistent writing to focus thoughts, empathy and make-believe, aesthetic grounds emerge. The human pleasures of public art and public space deepen - and that is the goal of this blog. Glenn Weiss, January 24, 2007

How ‘professional practice’ removed the working-class from the picture.

On of the most striking aspects of the development of the fine art world in the last 25 years since I was at art-college has been the rapid and total de-skilling of artistic ‘practice’. Indeed that word ‘practice’ sums up the qualitative change in the environment that artistic ‘practitioners’ and students operate in. I am focussing on that word because it seems to me to be symptomatic of the larger changes. Trends begin in language and ‘practice’ supplanting ‘art work’ or ‘oeuvre’ is one of the most significant.

As an art student we had ‘complementary studies’ which ranged across critical studies and other art forms but nowhere was I introduced to notions of ‘critical practice’, ‘networking’ or ‘research procedures’. Instead there was a healthy insistence on the ‘materiality’ of the process down to the actual grinding of pigment for paint (how quaint that seems in cyber paint age) and the physical act of creation as a significant and in some cases all-encompassing feature of creating ‘art-works’. That word ‘work’ there is important. Tutors not only theorised in the abstract but also commented on constructive principles, materials and assembly.

To read back through the statements of artists such as Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, David Hockney even was to be introduced not only to intellectual concepts of ‘making art’ (again note word ‘making’) but also to physical notions of ‘craftsmanship’. For artists from working-class backgrounds such as Moore and Hockney there was a seamless affirmation of the quality of making that their communities whether in Bradford Mills or Leeds Foundries would have understood. The general public may have baulked at the physical embodiment of those ideas but a welder or sign-painter would have understood the technical ability involved in its construction. Without ‘labouring’ the point there is a direct correlation with this activity and the philosophy of craftsmanship stretching back through Morris to the old guilds. Even as a lowly labourer (working on middle-class tutor’s house for cash be it painting and decorating or building work with my fellow working-class students) I and my ‘labouring’ friends were acutely aware of the instilled belief in ‘a job done properly or not at all’. Coming from a background of low incomes that mantra was a source of pride that maintained dignity and purpose when treated badly.

So what does this have to do with artistic ‘practice’? Well as the artistic climate began to morphose into dealing with the destruction of traditional class divisions with the breaking up of the Miner’s Strike and the new opportunities of money from selling the state assets back to its people the hard left suddenly found it could no longer ‘believe’ or support those hackneyed themes and looked to wider academic philosophies for support…Derrida, Foucault..whatever suited was used. Language invaded the academies and process became mental rather than physical. Life-rooms were ‘disappeared’ as were the craft technicians and their areas..wet photography, etching, printmaking in general and sculpture. Advances in digital equipment and the internet made costing art education cheaper and also opened up the floodgates of language which washed over the huddling masses in spectacular fashion. The result two decades later is that ‘practice’ has replaced ‘work’. Painters and their messy procedures have been sidelined in favour of more streamlined and cost-effective ‘streaming’ per unit (a unit=one student by the way). Result has been a complete implosion of not only those more gruelling and supposedly less intellectually taxing pursuits as painting, etching, bronze casting but also a radical denial that those forms were anything but an old-fashioned aspect of bourgeoisie and right-wing ‘control’.

Unfettered from their working-class shackles of mind these warriors of the new left/right could dance around the world as ambassadors of Thatcherite ‘entrepreunership’ or New Labour ‘Cool Brittania’ with not a moment of doubt or guilt that they had thrown any babies out with the bath water. This process was so swift and its impact so total that even before I left art college in 1981 the process had started. This process found its moment of triumph in ‘Sensation’ and its attendant ‘Brit-Art’ boom. Gone were the toiling working class and the effete bourgeoisie world of watercolours and oil-painting. Swept aside in the revolution of two strange-bedfellows – new money a la Saatchi ( gained from political propaganda lest it be forgot in the fog of time) and the hard-left apparachiks of ‘new’ Polytechnic/Unis and ‘new’ art. These were heady times and so what if half the philosophy and theorising did not stand up it had that elusive ‘Wow’ factor and it sold. Yes these partners in the dance had found each other and would never let go.

Twenty years later and like the ‘little’ man who sweeps up after the art-school ball the effects are everywhere. Art-schools and Polytechnics (Rebranded New Universities to give them ‘professional status’) are no longer under local authority control but are multi-million pound businesses siphoning off cash from those who can best pay i.e. the middle-class and the ubiquitous and much loved ‘overseas student’. That process of removing the original meaning and philosophy of the ‘Technical Schools’ and the Victorian notion of ‘training for ornament’ to decorate the ‘Empire’ are gone and with them Morris and Co’s belief in progress through labour.

Here ‘practice’ has come into its own. It is a fact that the recent changes in grants will remove the few working-class students foolhardy and resistant to parental pressure able to make into the newly ‘professional’ class of the ‘contemporary artist’. A few will always slip through because of inate ability as Grayson Perry recently noted. For the majority though a ‘second-stream and second-rate’ mountain to climb through school, further education and maybe an HND if they are lucky awaits. The good aspects of ‘craftsmanship’ (abilty, hand and eye co-ordination and pride) have been jettisoned along wth the bad (subservience, minion status, ‘little-man syndrome’) and we are left with a system that as ruthlessly middle-class in its deportment, salary expectations and class awareness as any yet seen. Blairism is not the triumph of the ‘old working class’ it is the triumph of the new ‘middle-class and it’s most recent converts…those lucky enough to slip their working class shackles and join the ‘parade’.How does this affect the Arts Council? In the past the Arts Council from its post-war origins onward has been largely a middle-class/upper-class dominated project despite its Welfare State status. As pointed out to me recently by someone in the Arts Council the post-war remit was heavily towards supporting the noble performing arts…Opera, Dance, Theatre. These were in need of rebuilding and supporting post-war at a time of rationing and scant resources and the Arts Council did its job well within that remit. Indeed some positive extras even appeared such as Larkin’s idea for a Poetry Library. Despite boom and bust several times over these arts are sacrosanct and let us not forget that they will retain their core funding unless some real revolution happens soon. The reality is the support of individual artists and community arts projects etc has been largely funded out of the lottery funds which are now on the wane. Forget Olympic slight of hand the real downward trend in that area of ‘smoke and mirrors taxation’ will continue as the public grow tired of losing their few quid every week.

My argument is that the Arts Council recently has become a partner in the ‘professional-isation’ of the arts. Individual grants have mostly gone to those most able to tick the boxes which is not the same as the most deserving or the most able. A middle-class practioner of whatever background with a good grasp of language and networking is able to jump hoops required and draw down funding.

The Arts Council actually funds A-N the artist’s newsletter which has come to define one area of ‘practice’ as defined by the new universities. Artistic finishing schools like the Slade, Chelsea and Royal College continue to process artists through to the major galleries as they have done since time immemorial. When I received an offer of a place at the Royal College in 1981 I was a working-class exception not the rule and was swiftly replaced by ‘overseas student’ when I could not afford the fees. From comments by a current RC student on a Grayson Perry article nothing much has changed there. Outside that alumni network the practicing artist from the New University flowerbed has pretty much taken over the ‘alternative’ network of regional arts centres, art galleries and a-n itself.

Nothing wrong with that in principle but because this new class also sees itself as ‘professionalised’ and newly minted ‘middle-class’ it keeps a distance from anything that reminds it of its non-professional background….paint, stone, non-literate visual communication…..the values of its parents if working class and the manners and dirty hands of ‘that lot from the estate’ if it middle class. Result the Arts Council unwittingly because it speaks only in the ‘new language’ is part of a process that divorces the working class student from its background and makes it feel ashamed. I may be regarded as being sensationalist here but Jeremy Seabrook identified a similar process in regard to community thirty years back as the ‘magic-carpet’ ride in regard to working class students going to university and never returning to their ‘sink estates’.Artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin are like Ali Baba riding that carpet for all it is worth but they have never touched down in their original communities since unless as ‘researchers’ or for the occasional family get together. They have done the trick their families expected of them of converting all that ‘arty stuff’ into cash and that brings a grudging admiration from their peers but do they give anything back?Where the Arts Council has failed in my opinion and where it could make a great leap forward is in increasing the ‘scope’ of its funding to include more of what regarded as ‘amateur’ by the new professionals which as I stated can and does include a great deal of painters and crafts people ‘removed’ from the bigger picture who do not apply for Arts Council funding (including serious for want of better term artists disenfranchised by the new elitism) because the gatekeepers - are generally the young professional middle-class – the ‘mujistas’.

If they could reintroduce the ‘floating’ and disenfranchised practitioners back into their communities or the communities they now live in we’d have a start. Paul Oliver argued for a nodal system of arts centres based on BBC buildings around the country and it still an area for possible development.

The key concept here is the A.C.E. remit of supporting the ‘cutting-edge’ - -who’s edge and who’s cutting? . Paring down the amazing variety of art and culture created in this country by narrow ‘professionalist’ concepts of right and wrong means many left out by default. Narrow face-saving attempts to promote inclusion by parachuting white middle-class artists into ‘problem areas’ to facilitate do more harm than good if not speaking with local knowledge and understanding.

Another £30 K sculpture of a giant egg on the roundabout on the edge of town reinforces that lack of communication. The ‘disappeared’ labourers……the ones on night shift cleaning, herded into lump labour vans at dawn, garage forecourts etc etc have a right to seeing the arts too but are their notions of what art is …craftsmanship and effort maybe? ….to be ignored too because not cutting edge?

20 March 2007

“Historians when they come to write about New Labour, need to look no further than our council (Brighton) to see where it all went wrong; an administration that consistently ignores core services in order to spend its money on headline-grabbing projects which benefit an elite few”Julie Burchill quoting a Brighton resident in Guardian Weekend 17.03.2007

What has this got to do with Parade, the Angel Row Nottingham showcase of local artistic talent? Well everything and nothing. The title itself is an oblique reference,I presume, to the coincidental ‘parade’ of dignitaries, binge drinkers, (or are they one and the same) community groups and past their sell-by-date musical acts which are launching the opening of the new ‘city square’. By an act of stupendous largesse the Nottingham City Council have managed to spend £7 million pounds ‘renovating’ the city's market square and as if that not enough then celebrated their municipal munificence by spending another £400,000 on opening celebrations. This in a city about to see community funding go into freefall pre-olympics and which despite multiple funding initiatives still has some of the worst crime and social problems in England to deal with. Hey ho let them eat cake ...

On the opposite side of this mock-Spanish square replete with silver chairs (Café Nero not Yates is our cultural destiny) we find a rather worn Angel Row which in its heyday was something of a noise in the IAW (International Art World). Ironically that golden period was long ago and far away and after a time when local-bred initiatives such as the Playhouse and Midland Group actually gave the city some claim to ‘avant-garde’ status.

Fast-forward and although the Polytechnic has blossomed into a first-rate art-school the Angel Row seems curiously caught in its own reflection. Parade number 2 curated by Mary Doyle is the second in a series of 3 showcases promising the newly ‘Europeanised’ residents of Nottingham a taste of local artistic produce …a sort of organic vegetable box of the brightest and best from the region. Well.. Nottingham actually if the map on the wall is correct then contemporary art is alive and well only within the city and at one location in Lincoln and Northampton. How fresh and sustainable is this box of goodies?

This show using the usual curatorial ‘premise’ of a trendy title is called ‘Out of Place’ so is it and what does it have to say about this place here and now? Well first thing seen is a screen showing two of Roger Suckling (Nottingham resident – Lincoln teacher) shorts which are amusing and well made musings upon just such a notion. Train tickets flicker and hand held video jogs and yes we get the message…global/local. Short, well crafted and communicative. Hats off Roger and more like that please. The fresh carrot in the box and no wilting yet.

Open the door on the gallery space and another interesting piece – Eric Rosoman’s ‘Muckle Flugga’ lighthouse in miniature and a series of marks (in tasteful artschool tape as crosses..religious symbolism?) across the grey floor. A successful and intriguing piece especially when related to the framed ship’s names. Out of place certainly but fresh still and another carrot.

The rest of the room contains a few mouldier items. Simon Withers has managed to be featured in two shows on the basis of continually shifting his ‘practice’ to suit the prevailing winds. This particular vessel. ‘Rokeby Venus by jumping’ can be safely dropped in the ‘an idea you’d have in the pub but dismiss as too silly when you woke up’ school. Flimsy but attractive to funders and small children because it is funny even if it isn’t meant to be.

Candice Jacobs is big in an ‘a-n’ (that's artists newletter to the unsophisticated) land sort of way apparently and boasts of having Damien Hirst ‘view’ her work which marks a new low in ‘solipism’ on art c.v.’s. On this basis expect lists of ‘Famous people what walked past my work’ soon. Her work…contemporary ironic with a capital ‘C’. Ironic references to other artists in same leaky boat and to be frank dull. Apparently her work uses ‘ everyday objects in unexpected ways’ - old vinyl records, glasses and artwork that looks faintly like photos in back issues of art magazines circa 2000. You get the picture. Kids like it when it revolves though so not all bad.

Oh there a site-specific wall-piece so bland I’d almost forgotten it which managed to make one corner of the room look like habitat across the road. So two limp lettuces and a mouldy parsnip there folks.

Second room and we into the potatoes (no meat..this is council funded remember). Paul Matosic and Roger Suckling both showing large films both of which enabled through munificent Arts Council funding. Both interesting and of a piece with their careers and as older members of show surprisingly fresh still. A couple of solid cabbages. Neither piece in my opinion as good as other work they have done. The third pillar in the room by Tomas Chaffe tells you all you need to know again kids like it because it a game working out which is the 'false' one. It no more an artistic revelation than the glorious reworking of an old idea (sadly not his own) by Niki Russell which proves that a good idea (Rachel Whiteread’s in this case) can keep you in funding for a while. As an actual object it was built by somebody with all the building skill of a member of the Royal Family. Fabulous but not as fabulous as Mayer’s film of a woman regarding a step ladder. Maybe she waiting for Niki Russell to finish his room? Three very limp turnips.

So there you have it. Global influenced local produce. If shown at a vegetable show I’d say that Suckling and Rosoman would get rosettes for at least truly describing things that were ‘out of place’. The rest I’d maybe use in an art stew like this but a couple probably end up in bin as ideas too far gone to be edible.

Re-emerging into a beautiful European-influenced marble square with trams gliding surreally through the St.Patrick’s Day parade do I feel that Nottingham’s contemporary art has suddenly risen to such a degree that it deserves attention. Well no. Decent enough attempt but lacking that particularity and individuality that is going to storm the IAW (International Art World). No point in musing on what might have been in last ten years with real support and funding for these artists and what could have been achieved with the same old square in place and all that money. No we live in a world where initiatives replace commitment and PR has supplanted common sense. Nottingham had a very strong art history before all the art-speak and interventions got in the way of the expression of raw talent.

The Angel Row and its apparachiks are not a cause of this disease they just attempting to deal with a plot of ground infected with the symptoms. Even this small plot of ground is under threat too now. The powers that be say money is needed for athletes and sports stadia not exhibitions. Maybe this isn’t the rosy dawn of a new European era but the last 'Hurrah' of a New Labour dominated agenda that said let everybody eat cake and things will come right.....more parades, more bread (foccacia not hovis) more circuses, more lottery money for everyone....

They didn’t come right…….but we have some lovely fountains to piss away our sorrows in.

I was amused by your august journal’s City names on the front of your web page. According to this Nottingham U.K. is not a part of the IAW (International Art World) and neither is Chicago which I find distressing for those poor artists there. I would love some advice on how long this state of affairs has pertained and with government funding we may be able to relocate to somewhere that is in the IAW immediately thus rectifying the situation.

14 March 2007

In an attempt to avoid putting to much junk down the drain I have gotten into the habit of washing my brushes and stuff in a little water filled pail which, when it gets too disgusting, is poured into an old container or can; whatever is convenient. Depending on the season and the humidity level, either the water evaporates and I can put the residue in the trash bin, or the whole thing starts to rot and stink. Which of course raises the internal, eternal(?) debate of self comfort versus idealism.

A few years ago my “mixture” rotted, dried up, rotted some more, dried up again and really became beautiful both in color and texture. I made a silicon mold ;-) of it with the thought of making a little bronze relief souvenir,.. or something, which I sadly admit, I have yet to do.